Personal story-telling is the standup comedy of the 2010s.

These days, you can't throw a rock in LA without hitting some kind of word event. Theaters, clubs and restaurants are all hosting shows where people read their personal essay and/or tell their story – and there's a new show starting almost every week.

Each show has it's own particular vibe, rules and flavor, from serious to sensational, literary to licentious. Professional writers and/or performers often mix with inspired amateurs. Some include music. Some strictly enforce time limits. Some are competitive. Some are a lot like therapy – at least for the people onstage telling the stories.

This is all great news for writers, because these events provide hard deadlines and thematic frames to create focused pieces, encourage productivity, provide a sense of community and offer an interesting new kind of showcase.

Your ‘pitch’ is a crucial element to selling any project, even if you've already written and/or produced it. You're going to have to pitch your idea to producers, directors, executives, editors, agents, possibly actors and, hopefully, marketing executives and the media.

WHAT'S THE PITCH?

Saturday, March 10 SOLD OUT

NEXT SESSION: Saturday, April 14, 3-6pm at Bang Studio, 457 N. Fairfax

REGISTER NOW $75 per person (or team) - SPECIAL $50 REGISTRATION until March 9

Registration is limited and first-come first-served. All participants will sign a non-disclosure agreement to secure original ideas.

Email or call Greg at 323-717-4731 with any questions.

This session will help you develop a compelling pitch for your script, show or book, including:

“The human brain is a wonderful thing. It starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.” – George Jessel

Maybe, in your mind, you're exclusively a writer, and definitively not a performer. Or maybe you are a performer. Or could be. Or secretly want to be. Even if you don’t consider yourself a performer, consider some of the advantages to writing out loud (in addition to writing words, of course, not instead of). 

If you’re an author, you’ll be making public and, we hope, media appearances when your book is published. If you’re a script writer, you’ll be pitching projects to executives, producers and/or in the writers room. If you're a journalist, you have to pitch your story to editors. Those are all performances. This is the age of Youtube. Almost everybody goes on camera eventually, so why not get used to it now?

It's a great marketing asset if you can deliver your material to a live audience as well as on the page. It certainly worked out for David Sedaris, Truman Capote, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and many other writers who became known (and paid) for their public appearances.

12 or 13 Reasons to Perform Your Writing

When you perform your original material on stage, you can…

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” - Douglas Adams

Most writers have a hard time being productive without a concrete, meaningful deadline staring them in the face. And, when it comes to deadlines, the meaningful word is ‘meaningful’.

"I want to have a draft by the end of next month,” is not a meaningful deadline. “I have to have a draft by the end of next month,” is no more meaningful, no matter how hard you underline or italicize it, unless the date is attached to REWARDS and/or CONSEQUENCES.

A meaningful deadline is a specific date in the forseeable future when you’re answerable to someone and have to deliver something.

5 Ways to Impose a Self-Imposed Deadline

“Find out who you are. Then do it on purpose.”
- Dolly Parton

What’s that? You say you have certain natural strengths as a writer? You want to choose Projects that play to your strengths – or develop weaker muscles – but you’re not sure exactly what’s in your creative toolkit?

The WSAT (Writing Skills Aptitude Test) is a way to rate your own skills at different aspects of the writing process. If you want to make things really interesting, ask someone familiar with your writing to evaluate your strengths and see if it jibes with your own assessment.

Writing can hard, frustrating and often maddening, but if you're clear on your motivations it can help get you through a rocky patch.

Different writers write different projects for different reasons. No reason is wrong and any one or combination can get you going. Why are you writing what you're writing?

18 Reasons Writers Write

1) Creative Rapture
2) Share Information
3) Make Money
4) Make Your Mark on the World
5) Change the World
6) Therapy/Self-Knowledge
7) Requirement/Assignment
8) Tell Your Side of the Story
9) Sense of Accomplishment
10) Everyone Tells You You Should
11) No One Else is Doing It
12) Professional Credit/Advancement
13) Obsessed with Project or Topic
14) Shame & Self-Loathing of Not Writing
15) Find Out How the Story Ends
16) Help Others
17) Not Qualified to do Anything Else
18) Stop Talking About It and Finally Do It

I’m sure there are others too, and it's always a good time to think about your genuine motivation(s) for writing. The clearer you are about your goals, the better you can design your Project to meet them. Of course you can change or amend your goals later, but this seminal manifesto can also help guide your work and serve as a touchstone to re-visit if the Project gets off-track later.

ADVISORY: If you can’t answer one or both questions, don’t worry about it, just keep going with your project anyway.

For more useful tips, check in with writing coach & consultant Greg Miller. Call him directly at 323-717-4731 to get more useful advice for your project.

Don’t underestimate the power of a good character name. The name is usually the first thing the reader knows about the character. It is our first impression.

I can tell you as a ‘reader’ and story analyst for movie studios, production companies and literary agencies, one thing that makes a script or book stand out – or not – is the character names. The names are a cue to readers about how inventive the rest of the writing will be. And that goes for non-fiction and memoir too.

On a practical level, it’s hard for a reader to keep track of a bunch of characters with similar sounding names like Joe, John, Jane and Joan. Which one was Joe again? And was he married to Jane or Joan? The reader (hopefully) keeps reading and hopes the characters will differentiate themselves through action, but why not make it easy for us to tell the players without a score card?

A character’s name helps define the character, and the array of names in a project can do a lot to define the overall tone.

8 Tips for Naming Your Characters

1. Use a phone book
2. Read the sports section of the paper
3. Keep a list of interesting names as you find them
4. Use a variety of first and last names
5. Include ethnic variety
6. Use a map or atlas
7. Vary the number of syllables in different characters’ names
8. Brainstorm qualities the character exhibits and turn one of them into a name

ADVISORY: Naming your characters can help develop your project, or become a huge time-waster. Don’t wait to find the perfect name for every character. Proceed anyway. Sometimes the characters aren’t that well defined at first so it’s not clear what kind of name would be best for them, like some people don’t name their baby until after it’s born.

For more useful tips, check in with writing coach & consultant Greg Miller. Call him directly at 323-717-4731 to get more useful advice for your project.

"Fun and uplifting!"

Join creative gurus Beth Lapides & Greg Miller for a life-changing, skill-building, laugh-inducing week at the KRIPALU CENTER in Stockbride, Mass. July 10-15, 2011.

Dig deep and get real as you develop your 7th Sense: your sense of humor.

Beth & Greg's unique blend of comedy and spirituality creates an incredibly safe and supportive environment where you can explore your writing, performance and life skills. 

As one student recently said: "Don't do it unless you want to change your life! AND meet the best people and laugh until you pee your pants (sorry,maybe that's just me)!"

E-mail or call Greg directly at 323-717-4731 to find out what the Comedian's Way can do for you and how you can be part of this magical week of self-discovery.

"Now I'm going to go home and fire my therapist!"

Use the Comedian's Way to

- Get over your fear of public speaking
- Create a one-person show
- Work on personal essays
- Personalize your standup
- Develop a memoir
- Put the light in enlightenment
- Find more joy in your daily life

"The best way to sit shiva ever!"

Asking for help with your writing is NOT ADMITTING FAILURE, it's part of doing everything you can to succeed, a way of getting perspective on yourself and your work so you can see more clearly.

Every single writer I know (and I know a lot of them) gets advice, notes, feedback and perspective from someone - usually from several people - on every draft, or in mid-draft if they hit a snag, lose momentum, lose heart or lose perspective. It's a natural part of the process because you inevitably get lost in the trees in the course of any long-form writing project and need an outside eye to help you see the forest.

Of course you don't want to pay for someone else's perspective or advice, you want it for free! And you've probably gotten a lot of free advice already, but if you're reading this, you're at least considering hiring a professional.

And that is tricky because a writing coach is some combination of producer, editor, therapist, cheerleader, strategist, market watcher and psychic advisor each with their own style and bag of tricks.

Let's start with how you know when you really need a writing coach or consultant?

THE PALM SPRINGS WRITER'S RETREAT is the perfect setting to get your writing done.

This 3br. house is now available for PRIVATE RENTALS - or SUPERVISED RETREATS with writing coach & concierge Greg Miller on-site to keep your creative juices (and the coffee!) flowing.

Check out PHOTOS of this singular location here or here.

Call 323-717-4731 or email Greg about your creative needs and book your getaway now (while it is INSANELY BEAUTIFUL weather).

Sorry, we're already rented during the Coachella Music Festival.